Against the Blog: 4-1

This section comprises most of the rest of the book. La.

Cyprian Latewood. As you will OF COURSE remember, he was Yashmeen's flame (kind of? maybe?) back in England, in spite of being a "sodomite." How he is in Trieste, monitoring ships and whatnot.

But what he REALLY does is work as a prostitute--he makes contact with two Russians named Misha and Grisha who arrange for him extremely clandestine meetings with a mysterious colonel. If you fucking tell ANYONE about this, EVER, you are fucking DEAD, they tell him. Fair enough. His duties mainly involve being stripped, tied up, and whipped.

He runs into his old schoolchum Ratty McHugh, and decides, seemingly on a whim, and probably partially because it's such a dangerous thing to do, that he wants out. Ratty knows people in British intelligence who might be able to help, and he introduces him to a functionary named Derrick Theign. Theign helps him get away, threatening the Russians with forged documents meant to demonstrate that Cyprian was their ward, and they corrupted him.

Theign and Cyprian go to Venice for the time being. They end up fucking. Eventually, Cyprian gets transferred to Vienna. And I am done.